And We All Lived Happily Ever After
by Hearts.Pocky
Summary: After the events of Prom Night, Sue reflects on Carrie, Tommy, school, and the fairy tales she read as a child.


_Note: _This is movie-verse. Frieda I'm pretty sure is Sue's friend who helped decorate the gym and befriended Carrie at the prom, and I'm almost completely sure that George is the name of Tommy's friend and Frieda's date.  
This is my first foray into Carrie fan fiction and maybe my last, unless something strikes me like this did. I just really wanted to explore Sue's character a little more; as huge as her influence is in the movie, we don't see too much of her. I really wanted to give her her own point of view, expand on her motives and relationships with others and such. Sorry if the ending is a tad abrupt, I just couldn't find a good place to stop. It's a little stream-of-consciousness too, but hopefully still understandable.  
This takes place… I'd say a little less than a year after Prom Night, but it doesn't matter too much.

**And We All Lived Happily Ever After**

This isn't how it was supposed to happen.

This was supposed to make everything better; my penance, in a way. Tommy would take Carrie to the prom, they would have a great time, and we'd all live happily ever after. That's the way it goes in the fairy tales, isn't it? The poor maiden and her dashing prince. But that's not how it goes in the real world. I should have known better. "No good deed goes unpunished", as they say. Okay, fine, put it in simple words, a cliché. That doesn't change anything. All I wanted was to help Carrie, and that's the long and the short of it; she was just so damn _fragile _and had never had friends and…well… okay, maybe I felt guilty about what happened in the locker room that day. How was I supposed to know that that crazy mother of hers had never even told her about…

But it's done now. It's all over with. Chris and Billy are gone. Tommy, Frieda, George, Norma… they're gone, too. Carrie and her mother put out of their misery. The poor chaperones gone…Mrs. Simard, my English teacher, tough but kind. Mr. Morton, our involved principal. Mr. Fromm, another English teacher, known for giving his students a tough time, ruffling their feathers a bit. Most of the students accepted it and went along for the ride, from what I understand, but I remember Tommy once angrily telling me about the teacher picking on Carrie for expressing interest in a poem he had written. (He genuinely cared… Tommy was a really good person.)

Miss Collins is dead too, and that probably shocks me more than it should, the way she was pulling for Carrie the whole time. I wonder if Carrie even knew how badly we were punished after… the incident. We deserved it, of course, and I think all of us knew it deep down. Maybe even Chris, not that she lets… let… anything go without a fight. I'm almost proud of my classmates for refusing to stand up with her, although I think it's probably less that they felt they _needed _toface the consequences for their actions so much as that they were simply more afraid of Miss Collins and losing their Prom than they were of Chris. I don't know. Maybe none of them truly felt anything at all.

Thing is, I can understand that. Carrie had been the butt of the joke for so _long _that after a while… we all just dehumanized her. Maybe I was ridiculous for trying to stand up for her at all. In all our years of school we had maybe four classes together, and I only ever spoke to her once aside from _the incident_. Even then, it was just to ask for a spare pencil after mine broke, and that was only because she was the nearest person to me. It has never, ever left me the way she flinched when I tapped her shoulder, how she timidly shoved the pencil in my face as if to get it over with as little pain as possible. She never even looked at me. Of course, at the time I found it too strange to realize how sad it was. So why did I bother trying to make things right? Really, what did it matter to me, the well-being of someone I hardly knew?

But then I get to thinking how beautiful she was when I snuck into Prom, another action so unlike me. She _was gorgeous_. For the first time in God-knows-how-many-years, she looked _happy_. It looked like she belonged; a spectator who hadn't known any of us would have thought that she was Popular and had been so all her life. And when Tommy leaned over to give her a short peck on the lips… I was too relieved to be jealous. I was _thrilled_ for her. I was happy for me, too, maybe, and that's probably the most selfish thing I could say. Happy that my plans had gone well, my guilt no longer necessary..

Then, of course, I saw the rope, the buckets… looking back, I wish I had done something more.

I wish I had hidden before Miss Collins spotted me.

I wish I had been able to tell her what was about to happen, alternatively.

Hell, I wish I had jumped on stage and pushed Carrie out of the way. I would have gotten soaked in blood, clothes ruined. That's okay. Save Carrie and her pretty pink gown. Let the adults find Billy and Chris, punish them accordingly. Then… I don't know what. Maybe Carrie would have been accepted into the group--any group, or maybe things would go back to normal. Maybe I would let them, I'm not sure. Maintain order.

No.

I would make _sure_ Carrie was accepted. I asked my boyfriend to take her to prom, surely anything I could have done after wouldn't have been as weird. I guess, as someone who was never bullied, it's easy for me to just say fuck 'em. To say that even if the school revolted-- and I don't think they would-- I would still have had Frieda and Tommy and that's all that mattered. Besides, school would only last for a month longer until we would all be off to college or work, maybe Carrie would be leaving for the world and with some _hope_…

I should blame her for all of this, but I don't. I don't blame anyone anymore. No one would have guessed that Carrie had that… _thing_, that power, which she wouldn't have even had to use if we hadn't been so _awful_ to her. And, most importantly… we were all just _kids_. Kids don't know what mean words, cruel actions truly do to others. We just follow the leader, doing what we think is best… and it's a damn shame when we pick Chrises and Normas to be our leader.

It all makes me think of something Tommy would say to me on occasion: _This'll be hilarious in hindsight_. When ever I seriously screwed something up, made a mistake. _This'll be hilarious in hindsight. _The situation where this most stands out was after I flubbed a oral report in some subject… some science. I went up and used a word that I didn't mean and it completely changed the meaning of what I was talking about-- something dumb, like saying "orgasm" instead of "organism". The period ended and I was upset and irritated and vented to my boyfriend. And of course he fed me that hindsight stuff and it just frustrated me even more, but he was right.

Actually, now that I think about it, the only time he didn't say his little stock phrase was after I told him about the locker room incident. Rightly; it wasn't funny then, and it will never be funny. None of this will. One thing's for sure… no one is going to laugh at Carrie White ever again. I just wish the realization of what this all did to her became apparent to us all a lot sooner.

As for me… I have no idea. At this time, the nightmares have faded. No longer do I rest flowers on her grave just to have her rise from the rubble to exact her revenge. Guilt sometimes washes over me, but I think I'm as over this as I'll ever be. Tommy seems like a nice dream I once had… not a real person I was close to and intimate with. I suppose it's just as well: I can't change what's already happened. So my next step at this time… college, definitely. Maybe I'll be a school counselor so I can help kids like Carrie who are just struggling to get by. Maybe I'll go off somewhere so I can separate myself from these events as if they never happened, but I think with all my knowledge, that would be a selfish thing to do.

And I'm through with being selfish.

I'm probably not going to get that fairy tale ending --poor Carrie didn't and if anyone deserved it, it was her-- but if I try, maybe I'll fare better than the evil queens and stepsisters, whose purposes always seem to be the utter downfall of the lonely little peasant girl.

Just look at where that got poor Chris.

Maybe that's not even a fitting description… maybe I'm not the wicked witch here. Maybe I can see myself as the Fairy Godmother, just trying to get Cinderella to the ball… they never tell what happens her in the end, do they?

I wonder if that means I can make my own ending in life's fractured fairy tale?


End file.
